How to Get Quality Free Backlinks - More Good Linkbuilding Habits
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Habit #3: Joining professional organizations
In case, you were not aware, the professional organizations and associations in your niche are “authority websites” that will have a strong effect your website's trust level if you earn a link from them.
Yet it's not that hard to join professional organizations to find new contacts and contribute. You can simply search in Google to find out which are the professional organizations within your niche. For example, suppose you are a search engine marketing professional with a website. If you search in Google for the term “search engine marketing professional organization,” one of the top results is http://www.sempo.org/.
Of course, you should not join just for a link. Instead, examine what other benefits your business and career can earn by joining these organizations. You can read their guidelines, member tips and other resources. It is also recommended that you do some cost and benefit analysis, because joining these organizations can sometimes cost you, as many charge annual membership fees.
If you are convinced, you can join them and put your website's URL in your profile. If the link is not rel=nofollow, you can earn search engine ranking benefits from it. Do not forget to build relationships, contribute and participate actively within your organization's activities, because this where you can even find more opportunities to get a link (read habit #1).
Habit #4: Writing detailed and useful articles consistently
This is one of the most important habits that every webmaster should have. By writing detailed and useful articles, you are constantly helping your readers to increase their knowledge and solve their own problems.
Next, continue writing detailed and useful articles on your website. After one to two years, log in to your Google Webmaster Tools, expand “Your site on the website” and then click “Links to your site.” You will notice that most of these links are “editorially” given from related websites reading your content. It may not be too many, but they are indeed very helpful to your website's rankings, because these are classified as quality links.
Habit #5: Having a strong “marketing” outlook for your website
It is not enough to just start a website, do some initial marketing and then write a lot of quality content. To earn backlinks, one of the important habits you need to develop is a strong marketing outlook for the website. That is, you need to think in terms of marketing your site to your users -- not advertising to them or constantly talking about how good it is, but making it easy for them to use and remember.
For example, you should examine certain factors that can affect how your website is being linked to from the outside. Ask yourself the following questions:
Am I providing an easy way for my visitors to link to my website? If not, you should consider putting information on your site that explains how they should link to you. You may have noticed that some websites have a section called “Link to Us,” where any interested readers can go to check for linking information and details. One of the easy and effective ways to get users to link to you is by providing them a ready HTML code that they can grab and paste on their own website.
Am I providing an easy-to-remember URL? If not, consider using a shorter and SEO-friendly URL. This does not mean you should immediately rewrite all of your website's URLs, especially if you already have an old and established website.
The key is “consistency” in the case of dynamic parameters in your URL (id, etc). For example, if you have a dynamic URL with session ID and other parameters, you might provide users with a shorter URL without session ID, and give them an HTML code that they can paste onto their website. Make sure also that the URL you provide is your canonical URL, and is the one indexed by Google.
Am I continually improving my website's services? Most webmasters are so focused on SEO that they forget one of the essential elements for long term success -- “continuous improvement.” For example, say you are a PHP developer with sets of tools in your website. You should spend some time improving the tools themselves continually. The result is that your tools become more efficient and convenient to use. This contribution to a better user experience can translate to editorially given backlinks by your happy users.
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